GREGOR KUSCHMIRZINFOINDEXDEUTSCHShopping is forpoor people.What and where to buy has become the basic means of cultural expression for most people in industrial imprinted regions.

We hardly ever express ourselves, our group membership, political viewpoint or feelings by dance, music or poetry, but by buying certain clothing, culinary preferences and travelling to hip spots and remote places. Next to the time it takes up to earn the money for such, it also needs time to train one´s senses for newly emerging trends and to spot the next hip destination, time, which instead could have been used e.g. to play a musical instrument or to learn how to tell stories in a notably imaginative way. The increase of buying options and information about products and services complicates decision taking, but rarely really improves those decisions. It seems that, once basic needs are met, quality of life improves dispropotionately to the amount of daily buying decisions.

The works in the selection shopping is for poor people deal in different ways with aspects of market economy. The performance I won’t sell these things took place on a flea market, where Kuschmirz has confronted the public with his most beloved belongings. A billboard calls attention to global trade in the painting Saignon 7, while gigantic pedestrians walk through an urban centre in the foreground. Sales rack turns human flesh into a good for resale and the series doorplates turns fragments taken from sales checks into potential store signs.Saigon 7An acrylic painting about global commerce in urban centres and the impact of algorithms on artistic working conditions:
Before being painted, the motive has been digitally processed in such a way that less artistic skill was needed for it´s realisation, but many more working hours – in comparison to tradiontional painting.|
acrylic on wood, 160x80cm, Cologne, 2015/2016CULTURAL ASSIMILATION / FEDEX / PAINTED ALGORITHMS

I won´t sell these things.A performance and public exhibition of the artist´s best belongings, which took place at a weekly flea-market on Karlsplatz in Stuttgart.I won ́t sell these things questions the value of personal belongings for individuals by triggering conversations about the flea market economy. | performance, Stuttgart, 2007DEAD STOCK / FLEA MARKET / PERSONAL BELONGINGS